With Russia locked in a geopolitical standoff with the West over Ukraine, the Kremlin is selectively deploying historical memory in a bid to bolster support for President Vladimir Putin and his policies.

TOMSK, Russia— As the director of this country’s oldest museum of political repression, Vasiliy Khanevich spends his days inside a musty Siberian basement some 2,000 miles east of Moscow, surrounded by photographs of the dead.
His salary is modest and the

MOSCOW, Russia— Vladimir Putin didn’t even wait for the conclusions of a meeting of Russia’s Security Council on Tuesday to denounce alleged Western meddling in Ukraine and reassert the need to bolster his country’s military capabilities.
That’s because the

KYIV, Ukraine — Before Petro Poroshenko, who won Ukraine’s presidency in the election on Sunday, had even detailed his priorities in a post-election press conference Monday, he was slapped with a fresh raft of reminders of just how tough his job will be.
By dawn, armed pro-Russian rebels had seized the central airport in

KYIV, Ukraine — An overburdened government, a separatist conflict that threatens to tear the country apart, and the hopes and dreams of millions who have waited more than two decades for meaningful change.
That’s more or less what’s riding on Ukraine’s presidential election two weeks from now, possibly the country’s most important vote

LVIV, Ukraine — If geopolitics were child’s play, the opponents of Ukraine’s revolution might well point their finger at this western city and say: you started it.
A bastion of Ukrainian nationalism and the engine of the uprising in Kyiv, Lviv provided the moral and logistic support for the months-long revolution that toppled President Viktor

HORLIVKA, Ukraine — Even some of Volodymyr Rybak’s friends suggest he sometimes went too far.
The outspoken local councilman was known around this eastern Ukrainian town for his staunch convictions and dogged style. When it came to patriotism, they say, he left little room for compromise with those he believed to be betraying their